Meant to blog this last week. From Saturday’s new Work section of the Guardian:

Lee Whitehill and Mandy Telford work for the trade union Amicus, Whitehill as head of campaigns and Telford in charge of Dignity at Work, an anti-bullying project. They are currently running a joint programme with Euan Wilmshurst, director of Action for Southern Africa, to promote links between unions in the UK and Africa. Wilmshurst lives on the same street as Telford and all three have worked on projects with Dan Ashley, a press officer with the TUC.

But before they entered the incestuous world of trade unions and campaigning organisations, the four had something else in common. Whitehill and Telford shared an office at Strathclyde University as National Union of Students officers. Ashley was a press officer for the NUS until 2004 and Wilmshurst was a manager at the University of London student union.

All four are part of a web of friends and colleagues that pours out of the student movement every year, forming a network that extends from the upper echelons of government throughout the public and private sectors.

“NUS is good as a networking thing,” says Ashley. “People who leave stay in touch. Euan and Lee weren’t even there when I was there, but you meet up and make the connection. It means you’ve got a slightly ajar door to knock on, rather than cold-calling.”

Telford, who was NUS president for two years until 2004, agrees. “It helps me in that I know people who are easily accessible who I can phone up if I want to talk through an idea, or I need help.”

And despite assumptions, says Whitehill, that network is national, not exclusively metropolitan. “I worked for a trade union in Scotland and a lot of people who were involved in the Scottish parliament had been Labour students and went on to become special advisers in NGOs and lobbyists as well,” he says. “Then when I moved to London three or four years ago and I went to a do, it was all the same faces.”

It is possible to cultivate networks from early in your student days, adds Whitehill. “You can go come out with a 2:1, or you can get involved in the union and come out with a huge range of skills. You go away to training weekends, educational events, political events. You meet people, and it’s social, too.” The NUS network spills over into friendships, too, Ashley says. Some are neighbours, are married to one another or simply meet up in the pub. It’s a very small world. (…)

Telford says that, despite obvious comparisons between the ex-NUS network and old school ties, there are fundamental differences. “It’s not about what school you went to or how much daddy paid to put you through education,” she says. “We’re from totally different backgrounds. We’re just people who were active in student unions - and people who did that are people who go into politics, campaigning and trade unions. We got involved as students and continued to be involved, and want to make a difference at work.”

Rosy picture, Mandy, but it’s there all right. In the last three weeks, I’ve had exactly that experience, of bumping into “all the same faces” time and again. We even had a refuge table at Tory conference - three ex-NUS VPs Welfare and me, the partner of a current NWO, all working for prominent NGOs. And that’s without getting started on the Oxford connection.